


A Black Matter for the King

by orphan_account



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Blatant borrowing from Shakespeare in a timeline in which Shakespeare does not (yet) exist, Dark Isildur, Gap Filler, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Unhealthy Relationships, Voyeurism, War of the Last Alliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sauron is dead (supposedly). The Ring is claimed (regrettably). The gloom of a too-long war should be easing away, leaving those lucky enough to survive to enjoy the sun once again.Reality, however, is rarely so convenient.
Relationships: Elrond Peredhel/Isildur
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2019





	A Black Matter for the King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Savageseraph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageseraph/gifts).



“Who goes there?” Abrazîr called out into the night.

“A friend.” 

The voice was familiar, somehow, but in the dark Orondil found himself jumping to his feet and pulling his sword out of its scabbard all the same. “Under what captain do you serve?”

“Previously under Gil-Galad Ereinion, High King of the Noldor and late dispatched to the Furthest West by the fires of the Lord Sauron’s own hand. Now I serve no captain but myself.” He threw his cloak back and revealed his not-unfamiliar face: Lord Elrond Peredhel, companion of their own captain and now king.

Orondil motioned to the space on the damp log beside him. “Then sit, if you would, lord.” He rubbed his palms together, breathing across his fingers to warm them against the cold. “You’d think the dark lord had taken even the sun’s warmth away when he died.”

“ _If_ he died,” Abrazîr said. “And forgetting that it’s the dead of night and the sun would do us little good just now even if it shone fully. “But as to Sauron: I can hardly believe it. It seems too much of his handwork’s left standing for him to be truly gone. 

Elrond reached into his cloak and proffered a crystal vial. “If you want for warmth, you might try this. Miruvor; potent enough to warm a grown man through and through.”

Orondil shook his head curtly. “It’s a little _too_ warming for my taste,” he said, staring coldly at Elronnd. “Unnatural, one might say. And wrong in any case that we might warm our bellies in such a peculiar manner while our brothers sit huddled with naught but their cloaks to warm them not ten yards off. If it were mead, perhaps, or brandy” – here he allowed himself a fond smile, though those particular bottles had long since run dry – “in such a case I’d gladly drain the bottle with you until at last we could toast the sun’s rising together, for all that even the coming sun fails to warm one’s bones these days. But this draught is too queer for my tastes, meaning no offense sir.” He raised his eyebrow just so, all but daring the peredhil to call him to task on the questionable truth of those last words. 

“It’s all the ash,” Elrond said. Clenching his hands, he rubbed his thumb against his forefinger, as if trying to force a bit of sensation back into it. Orondil wondered if that was for show, or if there was enough of the Edain in him to make him subject to the weaknesses of mortal flesh; he’d never seen one of the elves so afflicted. “But we’ve let the forge-fires burn out,” he continued, “and the mountains no longer belch and fill the air like they once did. The sun should shine through again in time.”

Abrazîr took another sip of liquor, felt it tickle against his throat and swallowed down to keep his own belch from surfacing. Elrond took the bottle back and laughed. “That is potent stuff, and a single sip is sufficient against a long day in the wilds.”

“But we’re not in the wilds, are we?” Orondil said, pressing his lips together in displeasure.

“I make it a practice never to insult a man who offers me such drink,” Abrazîr interjected. “But you must admit it’s – odd, my lord. You’re well known to us, for all you’ve seldom enough sought out our particular company, and I’d gladly welcome you, fine liquor or no. But it’s curséd cold out tonight, and I’m sure you’ve no guard-man’s duty or other task to call you out from your warm tent.”

“Our king’s tent is through the copse of ash-trees, maybe a half hour off by foot, if you’re looking for companionship,” Orondil said, smiling wickedly. “Though I suspect you know the path.” 

“My tent is as empty as yours,” Elrond said, “tonight and every night. The difference being mine is so by choice.”

“Emptier, I’d say,” Orondil answered, “as I at least sleep in my own bed.”

Elrond gave a great laugh at that. “As do I, most nights,” he said. “This present campaign is hardly a lover’s holiday.”

“Yet you could be with him now, if you wished,” Orondil said, “and warm besides. And my friend Abrazîr here would not have the benefit of your elvish concoction to warm his bones. It would be his loss, but not yours. So if I might put a finer point on it – “

“I worry after him,” Elrond said. “I worried after you as well; the last two men of his personal guard to have seen it through. My compliments on that, and my condolences.”

Abrazîr started to laugh at that, then coughed to cover it. “See how you fared,’” he repeated with more vehemence than propriety allowed. “You might have asked us, for one; now, or when Ferdil took ill after drinking from that spring your chemist declared fit for both elves and men, to give but one example.” He opened his mouth to continue but merely exhaled slowly and pressed his lips together, as if that would ward against another outbreak. 

Orondil clapped his hands across Abrazîr’s in solidarity. Then, to Elrond: “Your concern does seem a recent development.”

“I cared for them,” Elrond said, “and for the elves of my own company, as well as I was able. I care for you, too. I could not save them, but that is something different.

“A fine distinction,” Orondil said. “ _I_ fear they do men such as us little good. It is a happy accident, I assume, that our king is otherwise indisposed on the same night you discover your compassion for we his loyal men-at-arms, whose present condition might offer some indication to his own? I hardly believe you would not be warm in his tent, if he would but grant you entry. I have no doubt you’d offer him entry in kind.”

That suggestion broke through Abrazîr’s reticence, and he flushed more deeply, shaking his hand at Orondil’s brazenness. “Pay him no mind,” he told Elrond, “and ask your questions.”

~*~*~*~

Some hours later, when the sun finally began its path across the sky and Abrazîr and Orondil at long last were relieved by two men of Dol Amroth Elrond had never met, the peredhil at last shook the moss from his cloak and made his way into the nearby woods. He was hardly surprised when the rustle of a Lórien cloak crossed his eyes, or at the sound of a jeweler’s chain being refastened and a plain golden ring clinking along its links.

“I wish you wouldn’t wear that,” Elrond said¬. “The cloak is more than enough if you wish to walk unseen.”

Behind him, Isildur’s hand slid under his own cloak, resting along his hips. “Mmmmhm,” he said noncommittally. “It’s more fun this way, somehow. You can sense it, somehow, the communion of my ring and yours; you know I’m close by.”

Elrond smiled at the intimacy of that observation, and though Isildur was pressed so close he couldn’t guess how the dúnadan could possibly see it, he clearly felt the answering smirk at the nape of his neck.

“Tell me how my men fare,” Isildur said after a moment.

“Oh, by Yavanna’s ti – “ He pivoted to face Isildur directly, breaking the man’s embrace as he turned. “You were there. You _saw._ You enjoyed watching, which is why you had me question them in my way, rather than simply observing them from the shadows.”

“Aye, but it’s been a long war. You will humor an old king.”

“They are weary,” Elrond said. “Nearly worn through, I’d say, in both body and spirit.” Elrond paused for a moment, choosing his next words carefully. He suspected it would do little good. “And they question whether you should have claimed the Enemy’s Ring as weregild.”

Isildur’s hand, now settled at Elrond’s wrist, curled around his over’s arm in a vice grip, and Elrond turned his wrist so the thumb rested more comfortably against the heel of his palm. Isildur grimaced, but he also loosened his grasp, though his eyes were still fixed on Elrond’s.

“I don’t mean like _that,_ ” Elrond added. “You know my own thoughts on the matter, so I won’t reprise them here. As for them, they don’t guess it’s nature, so they can’t guess at the true dangers you flirt with by carrying it so close at hand.” Isildur’s thumb again cut into the soft flesh between the twin bones of his forearm. “But they can’t quite believe the Lord Sauron is dead. He did escape the _Akallabêth_ , after all, and they both remember too much of that day to forget what a near thing that escape must have been. And there was no body left to immolate or dismember or otherwise defile. He simply crumbled, and thus disappeared. Abrazîr is convinced he escaped somehow into the farthest East, and is even now regrouping his forces to attack us again.”

“They think to judge their king’s chosen course?” Isildur removed his hand entirely, letting Elrond’s hand drop. Then, no longer a question: “They think to judge their king’s chosen course.”

“And that is all you heard,” Elrond said, sighing in exasperation as he rubbed against the pain welling up in his arm. “They believe their king’s opposing general is an unholy god over whom death has no dominion. They expect this war to never end; and you see only the insult of men doubting your command, though they’ve not yet gone so far. They are rootless, as men wracked upon a sand that like as not will be washed out with the next tide. But I think they could hardly die anywhere so contented as in the king’s company; should it come to that.”

“You read too much into their words,” Isildur said.

“No; you heard their words, perhaps, but I looked into their eyes, and I am quite certain they carry at least the seed of that loyalty.”

“They are tired,” Isildur agreed. “By the stars, _I_ am tired; they must be cut to the bones as well.”

“They need a month at least away from this land: wine and song, without the need to forever guard against orcs peering back at them out of the woods. But they are alive, and Lord Sauron is not, so they may at least get that chance. You will see to it.”

Isildur stepped closer, lifting Elrond’s wrist to his lips and kissing the flowering bruise gently, his lips quirking up into a cautious smile. “I did love watching you handle them.”

“Be demeaned by their presumption, you mean.” He shook his hands free and set his face into a frown, though it was less than sincerely meant and he guessed Isildur knew as much. To be castigated for not mourning deeply enough the loss of their fellows, given the thousands of immortal souls I have sent fast to Mandos by my own orders.” 

“They see you as my beloved and not as a prince with his own dignity,” Isildur said.

“And there is the second mark against you tonight. “The watching I’ll excuse, for you’re correct – I _do_ feel it when you draw close while under the shadow of the ring; and being watched by one so absolutely unseen brings its ... joys, I can hardly deny it. But the shaming. You knew Abrazîr and Orondil would push me like that, yet you asked me sit with them in spite of it; or because of it.” 

Elrond started to say more, but the closed-off expression on Isildur’s face caught him unaware. It frightened him, truth be told. He decided to try a different track. “I had intended to take you off to a mineral spring not far from here, fetch the soaps from my rucksack and ease the grime out of your hair without so much as asking about the nonsense your generals were bothering you about earlier last evening. But now I’m not certain you merit such treatment.”

“You could let me fetch the soaps, and then I could convince you?” Isildur said. His expression was still stony, his lips pressed together in a firm line, but his eyes at least had softened into something that might give way to regret. Perhaps even a better path next time.

“I do not know,” Elrond said in mock severity. “I have quite the high standard, and you have quite a deficit to reverse. But I suppose it would be ignoble to deny you the chance at least to _try._ ”

Isildur’s mask cracked wide, just for a moment, yielding a glimpse of the wide grin hidden beneath. It was gone in a flash, but it was glimmer enough to give Elrond hope. Isildur kissed his knuckles once more, then made his way off through the woods toward his tents and the promised soaps. He did not turn back to check that the other still stood there, but there was little enough need. 

For now, at least, Elrond could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Savageseraph requested Elrond/Isildur, with a strong dash of voyeurism and a dark relationship. I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> If you catch more than a whiff of "Heny V" about this, you're hardly imagining it. This is more or less framed as a Tolkien-ish version of [the famous "That we should die in such a place" scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv7NsGCDVDs) from Act IV. I happened to be watching the _Star Trek_ episode "The Defector," which begins with Data and Picard rehearsing this same scene at the same time I saw Savageseraph requested a story about voyeurism. The connection was too fun to resist.


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